Basil's capital was the lynchpin in its political sphere; you could scarcely find a street within ten miles of the senate without a representative or senator's abode. It was not rare to find one or two strewn about on the pavement, collapsed from another night of drunken banquets. On this quiet night, the capital had been shuttered, while on the senate floor sat many bills, for the night, the discussions had been suspended, for voting to occur tomorrow. Amongst these bills were the elevation of the national guard over the army, the normalization of neighbor relations, the bi-decade defense audit, the deportation of displaced Arcadians, and the repeal of the espionage acts, all of them hotly contested. For now, though, the halls were silent. Across the capital, countless parties raged into the night, celebrating a mix of successful local command military promotions or political maneuvers.
A flash lit the midnight sky, a deafening boom echoing through the streets as many citizens were crawling into bed. Six miles away from the senate chambers was the Aranti Exposition Hall, its west wall bowing and splintered apart, engulfed in a fireball, rays of light and fire shining through the shattered concrete and plaster. Inside most of the gala's attendants: senators, representatives, and political lobbyists, were incinerated instantaneously by the blast, and those yet untouched would find their fate amongst the inferno. While firefighters quickly roused and rushed to the gala, they found roads cordon off.
It was just past midnight, but the capital lights exploded to life. Unmarked vehicles sped through the quiet city avenues, the first slick-black vehicles to reach the congressional chambers were SUVs, then armored cars, and then finally the treads of armored vehicles, of which finally a single emblem appeared: Arcadia.
Those who had decided to spend their night -- that night -- inside the chambers were snuffed out by special forces, encircling and infiltrating the building, kicking every door down, and in a terrible efficiency, murdering any janitor, custodian, or lowly clerk still inside. The local barracks, with most of their soldiers on leave, quickly spread word up the military apparatus of the emergency, and would be the first to begin the massive panic to find the weapons and men that had settled into this long peace.
It was an hour past midnight by the time the first government vehicles thundered through the bright, but silent streets of the capital, each window now glowing, silhouettes inside clinging to the frames of the windows. The bustle of the night life of Aranti replaced by shrill screams at civilians ran from the heart of the violence. The tip of the spear, the Eleventh Armored Brigade, was the first to activate, armored vehicles rolling through the cobbled streets, their crews carrying a grim expression, anticipating the battle they were charging into.
They were the first to turn the corner and see the domed roofs of the chambers, crowned with a hastily erected Arcadian flag, the Basilic standard lying limp on the grass just beyond the capitol building's walls. Their attention was immediately diverted as the forward vehicle's paint chipped away by the deafening concussion of autocannon rounds as the Arcadian vehicles, cloaked in black paint, began opening fire from nestled positions on the lawn and plaza at the foot of the chambers.
An attack helicopter flew overhead, low enough where the blades hung only a meter above lamp posts, seemingly prepared to reach out and rip them away from the motor. A moment later, the chops of the blades were interrupted with the rip of a solid-rocket motor, and another moment, the eruption of light of the ammunition in the enemy vehicle blowing the turret clean off the jet-black IFV.
Taking out the outside perimeter was easy, the flood of military vehicles from surrounding bases had clogged every street approaching the capital building. The Arcadians knew that the vehicles would only buy time for them to fortify themselves inside, knowing the hallowed halls were far too important to sacrifice in an artillery barrage or bombing run. Thus, two hours after midnight, with the capital was surrounded, Basilic soldiers, fresh and untouched by war, now were forced to begin a siege on their own Senate building. High Command was paralyzed as the news reached them of the events and were divided about how to dislodge these aggressors from the capital. On the field though, it was the commanders calling the shots, and a Basilic flag still laid in the dirt.
Dawn light stretched into the shattered east windows, illuminating the barrels of hundreds of rifles, those on the street silhouetted by the morning rays, before a sudden charge of vehicles and men forward and up to the capital. The first to reach a window could hear the rip of a rifle as his oversized head was torn upwards, his limp body blown back out the window. The next returned the exchange, and thus it went, hall by hall, room by room, corner by corner, a life for a life each time, oftentimes multiple in exchange for every defender. Rookie soldiers, who had not known the real violence of war, suddenly baptized in it. Room by room, the capital was cleared, the waves of poorly trained contract soldiers making up for their lack of prowess with sheer numbers. The fighting approached the last offices, a desperate pitched battle hosted at the end of a dead end, and as the last enemy combatant slumped over, staining the wall to his back in viscera, the building shook. A final spiteful blast from within the building sent the entire central vaulted ceiling down onto the central chambers, a collum of smoke and dust shooting high into the morning sky.
[... To be continued ...]
